Book lovers take note: it’s time to clear your calendars and get out your walking shoes. Litquake is back — and the Bay Area’s own rambunctious, highly respected literary extravaganza is bigger and more inviting than ever.

A glance at the festival’s calendar, running Oct. 5-13 at locations around the Bay, confirms that Litquake just keeps growing. This year, 840 authors will participate, and the lineup includes notable names such as Dave Eggers, Robert Hass, Susan Straight and Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket).

Comedy icons Chris Elliott and Merrill Markoe will put in appearances, and international authors from seven countries are flying in. Add a tribute to Woody Guthrie, a Berkeley Ramble, food events and the ever-popular Literary Death Match, and there are more than 77 main events — with an additional 89 on the closing night Lit Crawl through San Francisco’s Mission District.

If Litquake is massive in scope, it’s also unusual in its approach. Readers are invited to step out of their preferred genres, and authors take risks reading new works. Events take place in bars, bookstores, bike shops and bowling alleys, parks and city streets.

It’s been that way from the beginning. Ganahl, a former San Francisco Chronicle writer and author of “Naked on the Page,” launched the festival — then called Litstock — with writer Jack Boulware in 1999. The inaugural event was a free afternoon of readings in Golden Gate Park.

“We were surprised that about 300 people showed up,” says Ganahl. “It sort of ballooned from there.”

That’s putting it mildly. In 13 years, Litquake has presented more than 3,000 authors and earned a reputation as one of the country’s premiere literary events. In addition, the festival has expanded geographically, making steady inroads into the North, South and East bays.

But it’s the offbeat happenings that have put Litquake on the map. Readers love to depart from the traditional, and Ganahl says that writers like it, too: “It’s a chance for them to get out of their basements and mingle.”

Adam Johnson, who’s made frequent appearances at the festival, thinks it’s unique in the world of letters.

“There’s something about Litquake that is of the community, by the community and for the community,” says the San Francisco-based author and Stanford professor, whose novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” was published this year. “It’s not a big, cordoned-off section of downtown. It’s everywhere. It’s very alive, in different venues, in people’s neighborhoods. It creates this vibe that the literature is part of the city.”

It also gives essential exposure to emerging writers, says Johnson, whose story “O.J. Simpson Was a Friend of Mine” will be presented at a Stories on Stage event Oct. 9 at Berkeley’s Ashby Stage (stories by Lysley Tenorio and Daniel Orozco are also included).

“They really mix it up,” says Johnson. “You’ll see a brand new writer who hasn’t been published much, along with an old vanguard writer like Lawrence Ferlinghetti.”

“I’m still a novice in the literary world,” says Elliott, who will discuss his new book, “The Guy Under the Sheets,” with Litquake co-founder Boulware Oct. 12 at Z Space. “I’m not particularly taken seriously, so it’s sort of fun to go in as an outsider.”

Oakland novelist Tupelo Hassman is writing a story for an event titled “Suspicious Circumstances,” Oct. 10 at San Francisco’s Make-Out Room. On the day we talked, she was still brainstorming. “I’m thinking about a little story about a photo booth in a dirty bar,” she said.

Hassman, the author of “Girlchild,” thinks there’s a new generation of readers who see literary events in a different light.

“People like to go out and hear literature,” she says. “I think there’s really something to that, and I think it’s increasing somehow. If we can make it almost as casual to hear an author the way you can go out and hear music, I think that makes it fun.

“I guess that’s the goal — to have literature under the umbrella of entertainment.”

That’s music to the ears of Litquake’s founders, who say the festival is expanding ever outward.

Ganahl notes that they’ve started a series of Lit Crawls in other cities. “We just did one in Manhattan, and we had one earlier this year in Brooklyn,” she says. “Austin and Seattle are coming next. When people involved in Litquake in San Francisco move to other cities, they say, ‘I could totally do that here.’

“They do it, we oversee it, and they run with it.”

litquake 2012

When: Oct. 5-13Where: Various venues throughout the Bay Area. For complete schedule, go to www.litquake.org.Admission: Free to $75 (depending on event), 415-440-417, www.litquake.org

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